leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream
by makapedia
Summary: Soul decides not to dwell on the fact that she's domesticated him as he mops the bathroom floor.


**this was written for the soma five years later zine! but i am bad and am just now getting around to posting it **

* * *

Maka's never been a materialistic girl.

For everything she is - pushy, stubborn, a frustrating, infuriating know-it-all - she's never cared much about the actual fiscal worth of the things she has in her life. She's always been more about substance, about the meaning behind gifts and words instead of the price tag. And though it'd been foreign to him at fifteen, by now, he's accepted it. It would be impossible not to, really, after living with her for years, and after being privy to the deepest, most personal parts of her soul for nearly as long as he can remember. Maka is Maka, and though bossy, she's unfailingly frank, and probably would've been perfectly content with any old ring he could've bought for her.

And he'd been okay with that. Sure, the actual cut of the diamond might never make her go misty-eyed the way part of him might want it to, but it also soothed his anxiety to a point. Sure, he couldn't impress her with his brother's money, but he couldn't _disappoint _her, either. And there was nothing he dreaded more than disappointing Maka.

She meant something to him. How could she not? She'd seen the darkest parts of his soul too and hadn't even blinked. Maka accepted him so wholeheartedly that it still sometimes caught him off guard, how she could kiss him even on the days he's too lazy to shave and not complain about his stubbly cheek scratching her.

She _meant _something to him. Which meant he really had to get this right.

So he'd gone out and tried not to fuss over buying the perfect ring. Fussed anyway, because he's Soul, and even when he's trying to play it cool, there's still an annoying, vocal part of him that screams like a damn llama whenever he has to make an important, life-altering decision. Like picking out an engagement ring. For _Maka._

He's stupid, really. It shouldn't be so hard for him. He knows her, after all. Probably better than anyone else knows her. Soul might be famous for his deadpan stare and the walls he builds, but Maka's just as guilty. She might wear her feelings on her sleeve, but there are still parts of her that the rest of the world doesn't get to see. The stuff that keeps her up at night. The look in her eyes as she traces down the line of his scar. The way she cries on Mother's Day.

The way her hand feels in his. How she holds _his _clammy hand without blinking. The strong, sturdy shape of her shoulders as she leads him fearlessly through a crowd, even when he knows her soul's squirming nervously, too.

She's meant something to him for a long time. And he wants to mean something to her, too. Wants to wake up every morning to the smell of burnt toast and watch Maka slide around in their kitchen wearing mismatched socks.

.

Soul decides not to dwell on the fact that she's domesticated him as he mops the bathroom floor.

Menial chores are just that - busy work, for all he's concerned, because how dirty can a bathroom floor really get when he splashes water on it every time he gets out of the shower - but it makes Maka happy, coming home to a clean apartment, and he is nothing more than a house husband now, apparently. And domestication is for like, cats, and pets, and honestly, they're terrible cat parents. The only reason they still have a pet is because she's actually magic and realistically, they'd already killed her once. He'd eaten her damn soul.

He is _not _domestic. He is just a good roommate. A boyfriend who likes to see his girlfriend smile after a long day of teacher training. A weapon who loves his meister.

A partner with his great-grandmother's engagement ring in his pocket.

Soul nearly slips on the wet tile and cracks his head open on the bathroom floor. _God._

He'd thought picking out the ring would be the hardest part, which was foolish. Maybe, if he'd been planning on proposing to anyone but Maka, picking out a shiny rock to offer her in exchange for the rest of her life might've been the hardest part. But this is Maka, and there's nobody in town with a more complicated relationship with the concept of marriage than the spawn of Spirit Albarn.

Cool guys don't get nervous, though. And if nothing else, he is a faker right up until the end, and he will fake cool for as long as he possibly can. If courage cannot be produced, store-bought is fine. Probably.

_Probably._

He breaks out into a sweat, not at all because he is nervous, and entirely because mopping is hard work and he is a cool guy who works hard to clean the bathroom for his partner. His heart slams in his chest as he hears the front door close because he has not finished mopping yet and she's home early.

"Is that Pine-Sol?" she asks, audibly sniffing.

It should be cute. Instead, he feels like his stomach is about to fall out through his butt.

He feels her presence before he really hears her steps creaking down the hall, and though Maka's wavelength is usually soothing, Soul looks up at his reflection, panicked, to find that he's begun sweating through his eyeliner. Though the pigment remains, it's sort of starting to sting, and if she comes into the bathroom and finds him red-eyed with black streaking down his face, she'll panic, too, and think he's crying in here or something.

He has a reputation to uphold, okay. Soul Evans does not cry.

"Hey," Maka says, leaning her head against the door frame. Soul blinks rapidly to keep his eyes from watering. "I didn't expect you to be up already."

"It's noon." Soul squints at her through their reflections.

Maka shrugs, yawning. "Yeah, but you usually take a depression nap right about now."

"I don't _schedule_ them."

"Sure," she says, smiling, and reaches over to wipe the remnants of smudged black from beneath his lashes. "Thanks for cleaning the bathroom, Soul. It's unusually sweet of you."

Crap. "I can be sweet."

Her smile softens, somehow, and all it does is make his blood rush. "You can," she says, and her hand slides to cup his (clean shaven!) cheek, fondly. He tries not to lean into her touch but it's impossible to deny the call of his meister, and he is but a humble scythe, and his meister's hands have always been his touchstone. "I appreciate you."

"Gross," he says automatically, embarrassed, flustered, absolutely blushing in her hand like a damn fool. His blood burns, and his nervous sweating has moved on to making his hands clammy. The ring burns a hole in his back pocket, and it's all he can think of, even as Maka rolls her eyes and tugs him down for a kiss.

_Gross_.

Soul drops the mop and slides a hand onto the small of her back instead, holding her there, comfortably, as he lets her have her way with him. She's still clumsy at kissing, even after all of these years, but it's endearing, the way she stakes her claim on him. His graceless meister is endearing and charming and so frankly Maka that it's somehow more exciting for him, the fact that she still gets a little tied up, with her tongue between his lips.

Trying to understand his feelings has always been too daunting a task for him. These days, Soul's learned to just roll with the punches. Maka smiles against his lips and leans back, biting her lip, and Soul thinks he just might be able to pop the question after all.

He wants life to always be this easy. He wants forever, in a way he's never really considered before, and even if she says no, if marriage isn't her thing, that'd be okay, too. As long as he can be with her, Soul thinks things would be okay. Even if they continued on like this, weapon and meister living together, partners - things would be fine. Good.

Maka chews her lip and for a moment she looks to his chest. He knows her well enough now to know she's toying with the idea of something. Probably overthinking, if he's being realistic, but he waits for her to sort her thoughts out, watching her, still trying to calm the rush of his own blood.

"... Can I ask you something?" she asks, finally, and there's that steel in her stare that he loves so much. She faces him so fearlessly, even despite whatever's on her mind. "Don't freak out."

"Saying 'don't freak out' makes me more likely to freak out, you know." He has anxiety, dammit. "You can ask me anything, idiot."

Playful insults are their love language. Maka sighs. "Jerk. Come on. I don't want to have this conversation in our bathroom. The floor's crooked-"

"It's never mattered to you before," he says, but follows her lead, anyway. She doesn't need to take his wrist to lead him down the hall; he's bound to her soul anyway, would follow her anywhere at her word. Still, she does anyway, because she can, and Soul's still making up for being maddenly touch starved as a kid, so he's not really complaining.

"It matters _now._"

Soul runs through his mental list of things he could have done wrong. No boxers on the bathroom floor this week. He hasn't let Maka catch him drinking from the milk carton for at least a month now. Had he forgotten to put honey in her tea this morning? Shit. "Hey. Uh. Did I do something wrong? I thought, uh. Blair said Pine-Sol was fine to use on the floor, and-"

She turns, all at once, pigtails whipping herself in the cheek, and blurts, "Do you want to marry me?"

Maybe the ring really did burn a hole in his pocket. Soul's face burns pink and he pats his butt, just in case, and yeah, the ring's still in his jeans. Ah, huh. "... Excuse me?"

Now she's blushing, too, but her eyes are so damn hard and bright he can't really think of anything else but how pretty she is and how she'd probably read his soul the moment she found him cleaning (_suspicious!_).

Busted.

"I!" She blinks, as if she was somehow surprised with her own bluntness, but shakes her head anyway and reaches into her jacket pocket. "That's… not how I wanted to do that, but, um-"

"-Maka, I'm sorry, it's fine if you don't-"

"No!" She cannot get any more red. He's never seen her even sunburnt this badly before, and she's pasty white. "Don't give me an out, you jerk, I've been thinking about this all day and-"

"-What?"

Maka pulls out her mother's wedding ring from her jacket pocket. Soul gawks at her, mouth ajar. They stand there, in their hallway, the bathroom light painting Maka a fluorescent, fake gold. Realization slaps him across the face as his meister drops down to one knee.

Oh. _Oh. _She hadn't caught him at all.

"Look," she says, holding eye contact in a way he knows he'd never be able to, if the shoe was on the other foot, "I don't… really know what marriage means, but I know I want to be with you for as long as I can, and Tsubaki said that's all what being married should really be about, so… so…!"

Her squeak is adorable, as Soul drops down to his knee, too. "Idiot," he says, fishing through his pants pocket. "You're babbling."

"I'm not babbling! What're you doing?!"

"What do you think I'm doing," he grunts, and then he's holding a ring out to her too, and her lips press together in a quiet realization. "I've been thinking about this for months, you brat, and I was finally working up the nerve to propose before you went and crashed that party-"

"You got me a ring?" she asks, and oh, her eyes are big, now.

Barely. He chooses not to let her in on how he's been secretly stressing over the whole ring thing for the better half of the year and instead takes her hand and slides the ring onto her hand, almost angry, somehow, that she'd beat him to the punch. Leave it to Maka to bulldoze her way through something so special. Leave it to Maka to decide to propose and then pull the trigger in less than twelve hours. "It's my great grandmother's. Wes sent it. Sorry, I didn't know what kind of ring you'd like."

She looks so predictably flattered that he sort of wants to shake her. And kiss her. "Soul. It's vintage?"

"You don't get to be all weird about it. That's your mom's ring, Maka." Yeah. Maybe that's what he's angry about. If he could've worked up the nerve earlier, Maka wouldn't have thought she had to give away the last bit of her mother in order to tether Soul to her forever.

He wonders how someone so smart can be so dumb. Fuck. He loves her.

"It's the only ring I have!" she squeaks, and oh, she's crying, now. It panics him, even if they're not tears born from pain, because he is her weapon and tries very hard to be her big protector, even when he knows sometimes Maka cries when she's happy, too. "And it's important to me, so-"

"So you should keep it for yourself," Soul says, still on one knee, staring her down. Ah. Guess he had the nerve after all. "It matters to you."

"It matters to me," she repeats, and even as she's crying, she's still glaring at him, still holding out her mother's ring to him. "And that's why I want you to have it, God! You're the only person I'd want to hold on to it for me, and-... And," Maka pauses, and then she's taking his hand and forcing the ring onto his hand, just as he'd done to her only moments before. "... I want to prove that I'm better than they were. That _we're_ better than they were. I want us to keep being better."

Soul's never been so happy to have skinny piano fingers in his life. The ring's a snug fit, but it's on, and though it carries great emotional weight, he's weirdly never felt better about anything before.

It's big, coming from her. Marriage is complicated for Maka. Her perception of happily ever after is… skewed, to say the least, and he's flattered that she feels she can trust him enough with this step. Honored, even. It's vulnerable, even for her. Incredibly so.

Cool guys don't cry. He blinks his way through the sting of his smudged eyeliner.

"You're sure about this?" he asks, as if he's not already wearing the damn ring, as if she's not already smiling down at her own. "There's no take backs. You've nabbed yourself a stage 10 clinger."

"As if I didn't already know that," she scoffs.

She scoots forward, then crawls, and then they sort of just… fall together, sitting on the floor, Maka's arms around him, and ah. From here, he can press his lips to her neck, can feel the steady cadence of her pulse, the only rhythm he's ever needed.

Cheesy. She's turned him into such a domestic cheeseball. He'll never be the same. Soul Evans, house husband.

Hm.

"... I want your name," he mutters into her hair.

She makes a tiny '_hmmm?'_ sound. Turns, fidgets. Her fingers knot themselves in his hair.

"Unless you want to take the name Evans," he mutters quickly, very suddenly unreasonably flustered by his very reasonable request. "I just- the name doesn't mean shit to me, and I'd thought… I don't know. I'd rather people think I'm yours than think you're mine, if-"

Maka leans back to sit on her knees. Smiles, even through her misty eyes, her damp, freckled cheeks. "We can hyphenate?"

Yeah, okay. That sounds about right.

"Deal."


End file.
